Do Not Look For Me In Death
by Lady Chal
Summary: Years in the future, Victor Galindez delivers one final letter to Clayton Webb's daughter. Warning! WebbMac, character death...
1. Chapter 1

AN: If you can't stand Webb/Mac, don't waste your time or mine, turn back now! There's a million fantastic Harm/Mac stories out there, go enjoy them. However, if your mind is a little warped like mine, read on. This might make a little more sense if you've read my earlier story the mega-monster "Memorial Day," But I think this one also stands on its own. Finally, if the title seems familiar, it's owed to a poem "In the Arms of the Goddess," by an Algonquin shaman.

Warnings: Character death (referred to anyway)

**Do Not Look For Me in Death**

**By Lady Chal**

He's waiting for me at a sun-drenched table for two on the roof-top terrace of the Willard. I pause for a moment in the doorway and take in the changes time has wrought upon this familiar figure from my childhood. The warm copper tones of his skin are now shadowed and seamed with wrinkles I do not remember. The jet-black hair has salted to gray and the figure once so lithe and vigorous seems diminished somehow. He is smaller and frailer than I remembered, and the thought gives me pause. When did Victor Galindez become an old man?

He spots me then, and a ready smile lights his face as he rises from the table to greet me.

"Penelope," he folds me into a warm embrace and brushes a kiss across my cheek, ever the Hispanic gentleman.

I hug him back. "Uncle Vic," I say, "it's good to see you."

He smiles. "At my age, it's good to be seen."

We take our seats and he pours me a cup of coffee from the silver carafe in the middle of the table. We sit for a moment, not quite certain of how to begin, even though neither of us bears any pretensions about this meeting. He knows why I am here in DC. Likewise, I know why he has come to see me.

I know that I should wait him out, force him to make the first move, but he's had far more experience at this waiting game than I, and he's learned his craft from the best. In the end, I crack. Still, I try to cover it with a sip of coffee and a casual air as I ask the question that burns in my mind.

"So, how is Mother?" Ok, maybe not that casual. I can't quite disguise the edge of sarcasm in my voice.

A gently arched brow is his only reaction. "Actually, I don't know. I was going to ask you."

I stare at him for a long moment as I analyze his answer. It is possible that he is telling the truth. As a rule, Uncle Victor doesn't lie –at least not to friends or family—but that doesn't necessarily mean that he reveals the entire truth either, and there was plenty of room in that statement for omission. I decide to close the gap a bit more.

"So you haven't spoken to her? She didn't call?"

He studies me calmly. "No, and no." Then he takes a careful sip of his coffee. "I take it you were expecting her to?"

"The thought did cross my mind," I say grimly. I run my finger around the rim of my coffee cup, forcing myself to remain calm. Regardless of what he says, he's not going to change my mind. "So what brings you by, Uncle Vic?"

He sets down his cup and leans back in his chair, his head tilted slightly as he studies me. "I heard you were in town. I wanted to be sure to see you before I left."

"Business trip?" I ask lightly.

Uncle Victor shakes his head, his eyes serious. "Retirement," he says.

The word gives me pause. Yes, he would have his twenty years in by now. Thirty, if you counted his ten year hitch in the Marines prior to him joining the Agency. Still, it doesn't seem possible. It is the end of an era.

I shake my head. "I hadn't realized," I murmur.

He shrugs. "Paulina retired from the diplomatic corps last fall. She and I were both getting tired of the Washington rat race. We decided to chuck it all move back to Arizona. We bought a house in Sonoma last month. She's out there now, measuring for curtains and rugs and whatever." He smiled. "I'm just here in town tidying up a few loose ends until the house sells."

He shifts slightly in his chair. "Actually, that's part of the reason I wanted to see you. I was cleaning out our safety deposit box a while back, and I found something that was meant for you."

Reaching into his pocket, he extracts a long, white envelope and sets it carefully on the table between us. He is silent a moment before he speaks, his index finger still rests on the envelope, pinning it to the table.

"I've had this for a long time," he says, "since you were a little girl. I'm not sure what's in it, or what it says; I only know that I was supposed to give it to you if…if something happened."

He spins the envelope slowly towards me, stopping when it is positioned in the exact center of the table. I look at him, and swallow hard. This was so not what I was expecting.

He tilts his head and smiles wryly. "This probably wasn't what he had in mind, the circumstances he wrote this for expired a long time ago. He made it home, lived to a ripe old age and died in his own bed…but that doesn't change the fact that the words in here were meant for you." He shrugs again. "Either way, it's still yours."

I reach out with fingers that are suddenly trembling and pull the envelope the rest of the way across the table. I can feel the slow burn of tears behind my eyelids as I turn the envelope over and stare at my name, written in a faded, bold and slanting hand.

I recognize the familiar weight of the heavy, cream-colored paper beneath my fingertips, and for just an instant, I'm ten years old again, standing in his study and liberating a sheet of his best writing paper on which to compose my letter to Santa.

Daddy. The word, the emotion, cuts through me with a visceral intensity and I draw a ragged breath. Uncle Vic gazes at me with silent understanding.

"Shall I give you a minute?" He knows the Webb traits well. We have never been the type to bare our emotions, but I don't want to be alone just now. I shake my head. If Dad trusted Uncle Vic with this task, then I can trust him, too.

"No," I murmur, "stay."

He nods and sips his coffee, letting his gaze wander out over the edge of the rooftop to take in the familiar shapes of the Washington skyline, giving me space even while keeping me company. In this instant, I suddenly understand why my father valued his friendship so much.

I run my finger under the flap of the envelope. The glue is brittle with age, and it opens easily. I extract the single, folded sheet of heavy parchment. For a moment, I think I can almost catch a whiff of his expensive cologne, though most likely it is just my imagination.

There is no date, but I am not surprised by that. Dad was never one to disseminate more information than was absolutely necessary, and somehow it only serves to make this final note all the more timeless. I study the lines scrawled across the page in his familiar, slanting hand and my heart tightens in my chest as I read them:

Penelope,

If you are reading this, then you must know that I am dead. I've left it for Victor to tell you and your mother, as I know it is very likely that no one else will. You've grown up with my absences from your life; you know the reasons why we can never discuss them. You also know that I've always come back, even when events and circumstances led everyone to believe that I wouldn't. But this time, Sweet P, if Victor tells you that I'm not coming home, you must believe him. He, better than anyone, is in a position to know the truth, and I trust him not give you this letter unless he is certain of it.

He will tell you what he can –if he can—but I beg you, Pen, do not press him for more. Try not to wonder how I died or search for where I lie. I know what it is that I ask of you, and I know how hard this will be, but I ask it anyways: Do not make the mistake I made. Do not look for me in death; you won't find me there.

I spent my life searching for your grandfather and if you are reading this, then you will know that I did indeed find him. I found him by following in his footsteps, bearing his burdens and, ultimately, repeating his mistakes. I found him by coming to the end of my life as he did his --alone and far from those I love the most. This way is a trap, Pen, and I beg you, don't make our mistakes. Do not follow our road. Make your own.

If you really want to find me, then don't look. The truth of me is not hidden behind clandestine walls or buried in dusty, long forgotten records that should never see the light of day. I'm not in old photographs or newspaper clippings or meaningless awards and achievements. Where I am, Penny --where I will always be-- is with you.

When you ride a fine horse, I ride with you. When you sit at the piano and play a sonata, I am listening; and I play a silent harmony. When you are faced with trouble, and you don't know what to do, my voice will whisper in your head with advice half-forgotten but suddenly brought to mind. You are a part of me –the best part of me—and so long as you remember that, you will always know where I am.

I am on the beach at Manderley in the first light of early dawn, or sitting on the piazza at Belgravia in the late summer evening, I am in your heart Penny, and I go wherever you take me.

I know that I have told you before, but I want to make certain that you know how much I love you. You are everything to me, Pen, you and your mother, and there is nothing I would not do or give to keep you safe –including my life. Therefore, please do not waste yours on one that is already forfeit.

Don't look for me, Penny, for I am with you…

Still, and always,

Daddy

The soft drop of dampness lands upon page, mixing with the faded ink and blurring the last word a bit, and I suddenly realize that I am crying. I brush at my cheeks with the back of my hand and carefully fold the letter. I slide it back into the envelope, and tuck the flap in, then flip it over so that my name stares back up at me in my father's almost forgotten hand. It is the little things about a person that you suddenly miss the most, an expression they used to say, a look they used to give you…the sight of their handwriting upon a page… I run the pad of my finger across my name and suddenly wonder how much more of his penmanship survives in letters or cards or check ledgers tucked away in the back of a desk somewhere…or in those dusty, long-forgotten files in the bowels of Langley.

_Do not look for me in death…_ His words –his warning—floats softly through my head and it's almost as if I can hear him speaking. I brush away another tear. '_Too late, Dad,'_ I think wryly, remembering the papers I signed only this morning and the oath that I have taken.

Uncle Victor looks at me as if reading my mind, and I think he must have known what was in the letter, even though he's never read it. "It's not too late, Pen," he says quietly. "You can still do other things."

I shake my head. I am a Webb, and though we make few promises, we do not break the ones we have made. I come from five generations of diplomats and spies on one side of my family and three generations of Marines on the other. Does he really think I could do anything else?

Uncle Victor sighs and rakes a hand through his graying hair. "Look, Pen, the Company is a big place, and with your particular skill set, there are lots of things you can do: communications, crypto-analysis, we're short on analysts in almost every section—

"You're short on field operatives, too."

He shakes his head, his eyes pleading. "Anything but the field, Pen; he didn't want that for you."

"He didn't think I could do it?" Even though I know better, I cannot resist the old, irrational urge to bait him, but Uncle Victor is having none of it.

He shakes his head again, more slowly this time, and his expression is firm and serious. "No," he says quietly, "He knew you would be very good at it. That's why he never wanted you to join the Agency."

Now this, I truly don't understand. I can't think of a single thing I ever tried or wanted to do that my father did not encourage or support me in. Whether it was arguing with my mother about letting me learn to jump horses, learning to rock climb or getting my first apartment in college, he never really said 'no,' or 'don't do it.' He might get quiet for a moment –sometimes two—but eventually he would look at me and ask if I had thought it through, if I had investigated the best way to go about it. If I hadn't, then he would help me do just that.

I have thought this through. I have examined all the angles and studied all the options. I know now more than ever that this is what I was meant to do, and yet, in this moment, I can almost feel Daddy's silence. It is a great and heavy thing that does not seem to end, and I know that somehow, Uncle Victor is right. If my father were alive right now, he would be shouting

If anything, I had expected that Mom would be the one to rage, but when I told her she simply looked at me and sighed and said "you are your father's daughter. –Mind you, this is one of those times when I'm not particularly happy about that fact." Then she had hugged me, very hard, and whispered "Be careful, Pen. Be very, very careful."

She broke off abruptly and walked away from me before I could say another word.

Some of my thoughts and confusion must be showing in my face because Victor Galindez rolls his coffee cup between his palms and bows his head, searching somewhere deep inside himself for a better explanation. "This job, Penny, it's dangerous, but not for the reasons that you think. There is great physical danger, but the Agency works very hard to prepare you for that, to train you and teach you how to avoid it. There's mental danger, too. Half of this business is politics and mind games. The stress will get to you, and sooner or later, you're going to break. –Everyone does, but they employ an entire barrage of psychiatrists and psychologists to deal with that." He takes a quick sip of his coffee and then sets the cup back down, staring deeply into the dark liquid.

"The real danger is to your soul. None of our training or our best therapists have figured out how to fix that."

I wait, silently, knowing that if I say nothing then he will say more. He does, drawing a heavy breath and looking somewhere just past my shoulder, rather than directly into my eyes.

"The night your father asked me to join the Agency and come work with him full time, I asked him why –why me? He gave me this song and dance about my skills and my capabilities and the fact that we worked well together, and I told him to cut the bull. He was quiet a very long time, and then he said 'because you keep me honest, Victor. You remind me to look past the mission and see the difference between right and wrong.' It's easy to lose track of that in this world, Pen. This job, it eats at your soul, a little here, a little there, until one day you wake up and you're not even sure you have one left anymore."

He's looking directly at me now, and I can see the truth in what he's saying. It's written in the shadows that lurk behind those quiet brown eyes. I know that expression well; I saw those same shadows in my father's eyes more times than I care remember. I realize now that the man sitting across from me must be a very different person from the young Marine my mother first served with all those years ago, before I was born. Likely, he's even much changed from the hardened veteran my father recruited into the CIA a decade later. He's become one of them now: a spook, a ghost, an ever-changing chameleon, and I wonder if even he knows who the real Victor Galindez is anymore.

This, I realize, is what my father was trying to tell me. This is what he was trying to protect me from. Words from his letter echo through my thoughts.

'_You are a part of me –the best part of me…'_

I was his touchstone. The person that he was when he was with me was the man he considered to be the real Clayton Webb. I was his soul, or what was left of it. I feel the tears start to burn once again behind my eyelids and I reach for Uncle Victor's hand, closing my own tightly over it.

"Tell me about him, Uncle Vic," I say softly, "Tell me what you can."

His eyes crinkle with a faint smile and then he acquiesces. "He spoke seven languages, but Spanish wasn't one of them." Victor pauses to consider this. "That was probably a good thing," he adds with another small, wry grin.

I look at him curiously, "Why?"

Victor's smile broadens, "Because even though he became my best friend, he was always a royal pain in the ass..."


	2. Chapter 2

**Do Not Look For Me In Death**

**(Continued)**

Epilogue: To Manderley Again

_Three months later…_

I switch off the engine of my sleek, blue BMW roadster and step out of the car. The soft sea breeze ruffles my hair and whispers through the ancient trees that surround the old house. I study it for a moment, gray and forbidding, and realize that it seems lonely somehow. Little wonder; it's been shut up for years. I'm going to have to do something about that now that I'm back.

We never spent much time here as a family. Mom always hated this house. –I don't know why. It's perfectly beautiful. She's never said much about it, but I think this place must be tainted with some memory that she prefers not to revisit. Dad loved it though, and he and I would come here sometimes, when Mom was gone or away on business or just needed "a break" from the two of us. Gram always said it was his favorite place as a child, and his retreat when he needed solace and a place to think.

I step away from the car and turn slowly about, surveying the house and grounds in a complete 360° view. I pause to consider the high stone wall and the heavy iron gates at the foot of the drive as duMaurier's words surface from the depths of memory.

_'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me…'_

Appropriate, considering that it was indeed a dream that brought me here. I awoke, early this morning, with the sound of the sea whispering in my ears and a sudden hunger to see the old place again. Maybe it was the fact that I was damned tired of living in a suite at the Willard while I waited for the deal to close on my new townhouse in MacLean. Perhaps it was my sudden regret that I hadn't made stronger protests to Dad's sale of Gram's estate and our old house in Alexandria after I'd moved to California. It could have something to do with my cousin Drew moving back here to Virginia to claim his inheritance when Aunt Caro died and left him Belgravia. I don't like feeling a guest in a house that I once considered mine. Mostly I think it was the fact that coming home to DC had made me homesick, and after I completed the two month training program at the Farm I really didn't have a home to go to …save this one.

I walk up the flagstone path and around the side of the house to the wide, sweeping terrace that overlooks the bay. There's a narrow footpath leading down to the beach, worn and eroded with time. I take it, stepping carefully from stone to stone until the smooth round pebbles of the beach crunch beneath my running shoes. There's a wide, black rock jutting out from rise of the beach ahead of me. I know it well. I make my way to it and take a seat, pulling my knees up against my chest and gazing out over the gray, bobbing waves. The soft sea wind caresses my cheek and I close my eyes, savoring it.

I think of the letter lying locked in the glove box of my car. By now I don't really need to look at it. I've memorized every word.

'_I am on the beach at Manderley in the first light of early dawn.'_

He was right about that. I can almost feel him here, sitting beside me on this rock where we spent those few quiet mornings together on our visits here. In my mind's eye, I can almost see him, in loose long sleeved shirt and jeans, relaxed and rumpled as he only ever allowed himself to be in this place. He found peace here, and in this moment, I feel it too.

"I'm sorry, Dad," I whisper softly. "I know you didn't want me to do this, but I also know you would understand why I had to."

He would. –Perhaps better than anyone, I know that he would understand my reasons. If he were here, in my shoes, I know that he would have done the same thing. There simply was no other choice. And here, on this quiet stretch of private beach, I find myself talking to the wind, talking to my father, explaining why I had to do the one thing he hoped I never would: I tell him why I joined the CIA.

I've always been good with numbers. –Uncanny really. In the same sort of way that my mother can tell time down to the second without ever looking at watch, I can sense numbers. Forensic accounting is my particular specialty. I can see patterns in long columns of figures and know instinctively when they don't add up. "Follow the money," is an old adage that I quite literally live by. I can track it through ledgers and accounts, banks and wire transfers and a dozen different methods that the average embezzler uses to clean and funnel it into his own pocket. The San Francisco investment firm that I worked for paid me a very comfortable wage to perform this particular service for them. –Not that I really needed the money, of course, but there's something satisfying in working for a living.

Thus it came to pass that when I took my seat at the annual board meeting of the Elliot Forbes Porter Foundation last year, I knew from the first slide the CFO presented that something wasn't right. It took me another three months to discover exactly what that something was. --I probably could have done it faster if I'd had some help, but Drew was pissed when I asked for an audit. As Chairman of the Board of Trustees, I think he took it personally. In the end, he threw the thick, bound volume that held the year-end financial report across the table at me and said, "If you're so damned convinced there's something wrong with the books, then you figure it out!"

I did figure it out, but I didn't tell Drew. I didn't tell anyone, --not even Mom, or Uncle Vic. I could have called any one of a dozen of Dad's old friends, but I didn't. I knew how it would play if I went to them. They would take the evidence I had compiled out of my hands and pat me on the head and send me on my way. There was no way I was going to let that happen, not with what I'd found. So I did the last thing anyone would have expected: I went through the front door. I took my files, boarded a plane to Washington and made contact through the CIA's main switchboard. I plowed my way through an endless line of lower ranking agents and analysts until I found someone who would not only listen, but act.

That someone turned out to be one Sean Fitzgerald, the CTC Deputy Chief of Operations. I convinced Fitzgerald to include me in his investigation, as I could provide him access to the Foundation records with no one being the wiser. Three more months of exhaustive tracking finally led us to the Middle Eastern terrorist cell that had hacked into the accounts of the Porter Foundation. Unfortunately, by the time we caught up to them, they had already used it as a front to channel funds for terrorist attacks in five different countries.

I can't even begin to describe the rage I feel. They have used my family's money and power to attack our own country –to kill Americans. I cannot allow that to go unanswered. I won't. And so, when Fitzgerald told me that they could use someone with my particular skill set and offered me a job, I took it.

It doesn't change things, though. It doesn't undo what they did. It doesn't bring back the lives of innocent people who were killed with my family's money.

It doesn't erase my sense of failure… or guilt.

The sobs break loose then, from somewhere deep inside, and I hug my knees tighter to my chest and cry until there are no tears left. At last I lay back on the warm, flat expanse of the rock and close my eyes, absorbing the warmth of the morning sun.

"I'm sorry, Dad," I whisper dully. "I'm sorry I let you down."

"--Actually, I blame your mother for this. She's never accepted failure very well, either."

Somewhere in the back of my mind I know that I am dreaming, but I don't care. It is so good to hear his voice again, to see him strong and vibrant, the way he was when I was a girl that I cling even more tightly to this ghost my mind has conjured. I feel his touch then, stroking my hair, soothing me the way he used to do when I was little. It makes me want to cry all over again. I've dreamed of him often in the two years since his death, but only as a silent, watching presence. In my dreams he's never spoken, never touched me …until now. I swallow hard, fighting back the tears that threaten to fill my throat.

"Are you disappointed in me?" Even the thought of the question makes me feel very small. I could withstand the worst of his anger, but never his disappointment.

He sighs, "No, Pen. I'm not disappointed. I'm actually very proud of you. I am worried, though."

"I can take care of myself."

"I know you can. I saw the mincemeat you made of Cheveaux." Damn, I can almost hear the smirk in his voice.

I can't fault him for it though. I had practically taken the slimly little French banker apart when I'd found how he'd screwed with our family's overseas investments and the charitable trust. Fitz had had to pull me off him before I did the little bastard some serious damage.

"It did feel good," I admit, and pull myself back up to a sitting position beside him.

His hazel eyes, dark and green, drill into me. "You'll need to be careful of that, Pen."

"Of liking it?"

He smiles grimly. "Victor was right. This job will steal your soul if you let it, and you'll never even notice until it's almost gone."

"Did it take yours?" I wonder softly.

More silence. "It came very close once or twice," he admits.

"What stopped it?"

He looks away, out over the endless expanse of ocean. "Not what," he says finally, "…who."

"Who then?"

A small shrug, "At first? --Rabb….AJ and Victor. Later, it was your mother and you. Surround yourself with good people, Pen. I'm not talking about skill or intelligence, I'm talking about wisdom and honor. Find people who still know the difference between right and wrong and who aren't afraid to stand up for what is right, no matter how hard it is. Those are the people who will keep you straight. It's easy to lose sight of that in this game."

"Is that why you didn't want me to do this?"

He shoots me a small, sideways glance, even as he continues to face the sea. "Yes," he says frankly.

The silence builds between us until at last he sighs and tears his gaze away to from the water to face me.

"There is a difference between giving your life for your country and giving your life _to_ your country. Don't let yourself get so consumed by this job that you lose sight of that fact. Don't stay out in the cold too long, Pen. Take the time to have a life."

"You're starting to sound like Mom," I tease.

He smiles faintly. "Well, she would know."

I lay my hand upon his arm. "I'll be ok, Dad."

Dad glances back out to the ocean again and tilts his head slightly. "I know," he says simply.

He climbs down from the rock then, and turns to study the grand, imposing bulk of the house that sprawls out across the cliff above us. "So what are you going to do with the old rock heap?" he asks.

"Restore it," I say matter-of-factly. "It's a shame to let it go to waste. I was thinking I'd open it up and use it as a weekend house."

"Yeah, I can see that," he says ironically. "It makes perfect sense to lay out a couple million from the trust so that you can rattle around on weekends in a thirty-five room money pit. --What's Drew going to say?"

"Nothing that we will be able to print in the annual report, I'm sure." I smile at the thought. There's nothing Drew can say. Manderley is mine, just as Belgravia is his, and money from the family trust is earmarked for the upkeep and maintenance of both properties. He won't have much room for complaint, especially after the hefty sum he's just plowed back into the farm.

Dad just looks at me and shakes his head. "Be nice to your cousin," he chides. "You've given him enough headaches this year."

I suppose he's right. Drew's going to be well into his next term as Chairman –if he _has_ a next term as Chairman—before he gets the financial mess sorted out with the FBI and the State Department. Actually, Drew and I really do get along –most of the time—but damn it, he really should have listened to me when I told him something was wrong with the books.

I wake, and stretch, and slide down from the rock. I walk a short way up the beach and pause to consider the old house for a moment, a smile playing at my lips. I think about my cousin's reaction to my impending announcement of my intentions to renovate Manderley. I won't rely solely upon the trust, of course. I do have money of my own, but I won't tell Drew that. –Not at first, anyway. It would ruin the spectacle, and we need something to keep the board meeting lively.

The smile broadens on my lips as I make my way back up the narrow path to the house. I think again of my father and for an instant, I can almost imagine him standing on the terrace above, waiting for me. I can't picture him just now, but I can feel him in my heart, and for all the uncertainty that lies ahead, for all the things I don't know, there is one thing of which I am absolutely certain:

In this place, and in this moment, he is smiling, too.


End file.
